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Thursday, October 8, 2009

studying spinning maple seeds

You know, the "helicopters" that you threw as kids. Looks like playing around with maple seeds has gone to a whole new level. I found this cool photo of a maple seed in an article for the California Institute of Technology.

Here is a quote from the article-
"Maple seeds could represent the most basic and simple design for a miniature helicopter, if the swirling wing could be powered by a micromotor," says Lentink. Single-rotor helicopters have been built and flown successfully with wing spans of roughly a meter, but never at the scale of a maple seed.

6 comments:

  1. That is so neat. It reminds me of DNA!

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  2. what an incredible picture - I love it! Thank you for sharing.

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  3. That's so cool! I love those seeds and have always called them helicopters.

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  4. This is really cool!! I looooved helicopters when I was little (and still do!).

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